and of course you can find more information moresfrecpark.org. -- >> good afternoon and welcome to the city and school district select committee for september 25, our first regularly scheduled meeting post legislative recess. i want to thank the staff at sfgtv and jennifer lowe for making the transcript available on line and recognize our clerk derek evans. i am your chair and joined by our board of education commissioners hide dra mendoza

and commissioner wynns. i am notified that we don't have a quorum today to take actions today but have a quorum from the board of education members. i would like to apologize to the members of the city family that worked so hard to prepare for the meeting today but given everyone has taken the time to come out and present on the issue before us also to speak on this i worked with the clerks and we are going to call the item so that any members of the public that have presentations can still do so and then we can have public comment and that we will have to reagendize this item for next months joint select committee meeting in order to take action on this item. committee members who does make it here will be sure

to ask questions during public comment to extend your time period and of course any members of the public can speak after that so this hearing -- oh i guess we should take roll call first. >> on the call of the roll. supervisor kim. >> here. >> kim present. supervisor avalos. avalos absent. supervisor farrell. noted absent. excuse me. commissioner mendoza-mcdonnell. noted present. commissioner fewer. commissioner fewer noted absent. commissioner wynns noted present. pursuant to board rule we do not have a quorum. this hearing is for informational purposes only. >> thank you mr. clerk. so this hearing request is a specific conversations with the

school district to coordinate city and resources and strategies for addressing the growing population of unaccompanied children and youth here in san francisco. this issue was highlighted by commissioners from the board of education and david campos here on the board of supervisors when we passed supplemental budget appropriation -- excuse me mr. -- madam chair we need to call the item. >> oh, will you call item 1. >> thank you. item 1 is a hearing on educational and support services for unaccompanied immigrant children presentations from the san francisco unified school district and department of public health and human services agency and family and children services regarding educational services and support services from provided to increased numbers of unaccompanied

immigrant children arriving in san francisco. >> thank you mr. clerk. i won't repeat what i said. it's estimated to the department of homeland security thousands of children have fled to the united states a substantial increase from prior years and estimated that the number of children entering the united states will exceed 60,000 individuals with 200 to 400 youth crossing the border each day. san francisco has been a city of refuge for those escaping violence and at san francisco high school one of the schools in san francisco that welcomes youth that recently immigranted into the country has sursurpassed 25% of

the enrollment. i hope we can get a clear sense of the resources available from the city and the school district and get clarity on whether specific resources should be houses and whose jurisdiction as well as specific expertise is most helpful. i want to recognize lonnie kent from the mayor's office who is coordinating efforts among the city departments and targeted this issue as a top priority so i want to invite her up first to start off the hearing and again you will have two minutes. we will sure to interject with some questions along the presentation. thank you. >> great. thank you for having me. so i think maybe to add one wrinkle to this is sunny was supposed to up load the presentation so i didn't bring it with me. >> oh actually she doesn't -- do you have -- >> i don't.

>> we normally ask folks to bring it on their own. [inaudible] yeah. she normally doesn't do that, sorry. >> [inaudible] >> okay. well, we can if you like go to ken epstein and max from department of public health first better. >> i can grab it. >> but if you want to make some introductory remarks you're welcome to do that. >> i will do that. >> [inaudible] >> sorry for the confusion. i will take blame for a rookie mistake so i will go ahead and just do a quick introduction so in response to the request the

work group, the city work group that we have been working together put together this presentation to provide you guys with an overview of what the city has done to respond, and then also has looked specifically at some of the questions of how we are specifically coordinating with the school district. so what i do want to talk about before we kind of dive into the details is the way as the city family, the way we have come together to talk about this is we talk about this as a developing story. we don't think it's over. when we meet from one week to the next many items changed so we learned to be nimble. we expect that we will see between 300 to 500 children by the end of the calendar year so the plans efforts have been around that. the direction from the mayor has been that our leaders, advocates, city employees and members of the community must

continue to help the children feel welcomed here in san francisco. this isn't something we do once but need to continue to working on it and we need to stay engaged. this will continue to -- this situation will continue to develop i think in november it will change again once the federal government starts to reengage so i just brought some quick steps. california by the end of august from january 1 to august 31 has seen 4680 children placed here. 208 of those have been to san francisco so we received between four and 5% of all placements. the trend has slowed in terms of children crossing at the border, so we expect the trend of children coming to the city to also slow down. i just want to talk briefly about what the mayor has done so far, his

leadership and advocacy on this issue. back in june he hosted a briefing at city hall for leads and community leaders to and san francisco to be part of the solution. it put us in a good space with one of the federal partners and we reached out to talk how to work together opposed to some of the negativity they're receiving. the mayor traveled to san francisco on numerous occasions starting in july to emphasize the state leadership and legal representation. this is before the rocket docket established. he saw this coming and was having the conversations early on. he joined other mayors across the state and penned a letter to the federal government he believes that all local jurisdictions should be responding proactively and embracing the children as they

arrive in their cities and continues to be a liaison to state and federal representation and the white house in forums and engagement so there is constant dialogue going on. what we're seeing from the community members and what we seeing is constantly being translated up and we're looking forward to hearing something back from them, so that's kind of -- from a leadership and advocacy standpoint kind of what the mayor has been doing and he asked for city coordination which all of the folks in this room today and what they have been working hard at. we had several meetings mostly to share information and our resources are available to meet the specific needs of the children in a culturally competent way so we have been having this dialogue and again it's ongoing and changes from week to week in terms what we need to do and we have a good handle on it but

for a while it was keeping each other informed. our department heads met with legal providers early on. we wanted to make sure if we have resources available in the city that we are making them available to them which includes kind of how to engage with families that have been through trauma, any other needs that the children might have and my colleagues will be able to talk more about what came out of that meeting and finally adriane will talk about this, but we also created a low resource guide for services specific to the children and not just any immigrant children but for this particular surge so that's kind of been a kickoff to this collaboration and then all of our collaborators are here to tell you specifically what they have been working on. >> just a quick question. i assume that the brochures for the youth are in languages?

yes. in the news we primarily talk about central american youth crossing the border unaccompanied with adults. do we know of other youth coming here in the same fashion? >> i haven't talked about it specifically with the office of refugee resettlement and we have been focused on this but that's a good question. >> okay. thank you. so following the presentation we do have ken epstein and max rosha from the department of public health and for the members of the public who are following it will be followed by a presentation by the human services agency and then we have sfusd and brian hsu from the mayor's office on housing and community development and civic

engagement and affairs. i wanted to note that the director of cyf maria su will be available for questions during the presentation so thank you. >> thank you commissioners and supervisor for this hearing. i am representing barbara garcia and the department of public health. i am ken epstein and the director of children youth and families and have max, the deputy and as well as christine the director from family services and i want to start by saying that we all know that the experience of the refugee children crossing the border starts in their home, continues to their crossing and ends up in the stay here and each episode is filled with health and mental health and other concerns that lead to extraordinary trauma around the crossings and we have been hearing the stories over

and over again. in terms of the health department we were called together to coordinate our services and basically we have put our efforts into two main bucketets. one is service coordination and the other is service capacity via primary care and other specialty services and what we mean by that is the decision was and is that ree is a safety net available to youth and the young people and their families we wanted to make sure they could access the services without boundaries and that we were coordinated and i should say that health commission passed an ordinance supporting this effort. we have developed a draft resource guide that allows us to understand all of the resources available for the young people and their families. the behavioral health has come together, the treatment providers have come together to

meet and talk about what best practices are culturally specifically identifying leads who could provide the services and where they could access the services so we knew when they came to us we had the best appropriate services. we have developed a first encounter check list. this is a very important item that we didn't really have before because we know that a lot of folks will be visiting homes, school districts, nurses, others and what we discussed we wanted to have a common set of questions so as we visited homes we can get data around risk and trauma scprt questions so we developed a check list with maternal child and adolescent health and new comers program and human services agency and access the risk in the homes also. in terms of primary care we have a safety net for these young people and they could be at the san francisco general hospital

in terms of the teen and health and young adult clinics or new comer program. both programs have experience with young people as well as folks coming with the kind of experiences they have had. we're experiencing in treating and triaging and coordinating the services so we have been meeting together to make sure we can coordinate as well as we can, and the new comer health program in particular has incredible expertise in terms of accessing federal benefits and making sure they have comprehensive health screening. of course maternal child health -- some of the young people coming over have unfortunately faced incredible experiences coming over and some have -- are pregnant. some are young moms. we have our prenatal and postpartum care for

the youth and the foster care system so before i get to sylvia's presentation i know the other question that came up is not on the -- is about san francisco general hospital. if a kid ends up in acute care the same services happen and referred to a social worker and we can coordinate the care through the system and our safety net. thanks. >> can i ask a follow up question to the question about acute care or when they end up in an er at the local hospital. you mentioned they would get the same treatment as any other individual walking in but how are they released? >> meaning if they're unaccompanied going in? they would contact a social worker in the hospital and they would treat the hospital as they would any other child that is unaccompanied. they would assess risk and whether social services needed to be called in

or a parent or a guardian to care for them. >> you mentioned this briefly and the youth also are able to access mental health services and counseling -- [inaudible] >> right. in terms of the child and youth system has instituted -- [speaking spanish] la raza and our clinic in terms of leads. in terms of instructing us making sure that the services are culturally and linguistally appropriate and remember some of the ln languages are not spanish and they're indigenous to guatemala as well so we have to make sure we have shows services available. >> as dph has seen are they coming from other countries as well in terms of behavioral health? >> in terms of behavioral health -- lonnie said this is a

developing story. they're not coming into the clinic at a high point right now. you will hear from the school district and legal folks that is where it's beginning. we will see more youth as they're identified and have issues from trauma with primary care. fortunately we're embedded with primary care and we will find out and treage them to other services and we have youth that come from many countries and certainly are constantly working with lots of folks. >> thank you so much. >> sure. >> good afternoon i am sylvia and director for service service with the human services agency. child protective services provides investigation and intervention services to children and their families that

are referred for allocation of abuse and neglect and the department is responsible for investigating the service determining if children should be in the home or removed from the home on a temporary basis while working with the children and identifying safety issues and reunifying children if possible. if not we determine a permanent plan for the child through legal guardianship or adoption. all children in need of protection of abuse and neglect are eligible to get services and it's the legal responsibility to seek out relatives to serve as a viable placement option for the youth within the united states and within their home country so that's what our staff would do, locate relatives and place them

with them. at this point family and children services has not seen an increase of the children come being to our attention. many children are being placed with relatives. we have been in discussions with the state department of social services that indicated that is where the federal government is placing these children is relative and family -- other family members. we anticipate as ken said that as children remain in this country for some period of time we may at a later point and time begin to see children coming to our attention. they would come to our attention if there were any allegations of abuse or neglect or through mental health services they were referred to us because there were issues with the families they are with. any foster care providers that we utilize are required to complete a state licensing process for background checks

and a grounds inspection, and most recently this require became a standard for all relatives and non related extended family members so we are now in the process of having the same-same standard as we call it for relatives and extended family members and licensed caregivers. we are working with the department of public health to develop a first encounter protocol and i am working with the state department of social services in discussing this issue and usually we have about a monthly call. we've provided the departments numbers -- contact numbers for our child abuse hot line and for our foster parent recruitment line because we

have seen an uptake in people interested in taking children into their care. specifically they're asking about these children although we're not seeing them come to our attention. >> i had a quick question. i know that the count of families known or defined by sfusd as being homeless is 160 students and i am curious if that also accompanies unaccompanied youth? okay. so i will save that question if you don't know that but how do they navigate through obtaining safe and secure shelter through hsa? >> the unaccompanied minors? >> yes. >> if a unaccompanied minor is referred to us we will try to determine the age of the child because our services go up to age 21 and it's very important that we distinguish between a

child that is under the age of 18 and what we call a non minor dependent between the ages of 18 and 21. we have a number of foster care placements that we would place a child in. while placing a child in foster care we are looking for relatives or extended family members to place the child with and we try to determine whether that child needed to stay here with family members and receive services and then connect them to services. >> what do they do while you're looking for relatives or foster care placement? >> so they would go to one of the foster homes and we would enroll them in school if they're under the age of 18. if they're over the age of 18 we have an independent living program that we would refer them to where they would begin working with them on a number of things trying to determine what their

educational status is, whether they could work and try to find them employment, determine what the health needs are, if there are mental health needs so that program would work with them if they're over 18. >> and between 18 and 21 they qualify for our regular adult shelter services? >> yes, they do. >> okay. thank you. >> okay. >> i apologize. commissioner wynns has a question. thank you . >> could you tell me how many students -- how many unaccompanied minors, kids in this group are in foster care? >> we don't really have -- i can't tell you the exact number of unaccompanied minors we have right now. we don't generally get a large number of

unaccompanied minors so it's not a frequent thing that happens. >> i understand but we're talking about emerging new phenomenon so we don't have any idea there are? >> we have not received any in the recent -- i would say six months. >> thank you. >> hi ms. wong. >> good afternoon. i am christina wong, a special assistant to the superintendent and joined by kimberly coats who is the director of school health and mr. perez and jan walker representing people services. they're available to answer questions after that presentation. so unaccompanied immigrant children has been part of our community for years and while we don't keep track how many are identified at this point that are unaccompanied ip

grint children we keep track of the new comer students from central american countries and other countries of origin so looking at the data you my from 11-12 school year we had 102 and the next year we had 50% increase, and from 12-13 to 13-14 we had approximately a 67% increase. at this time we have been in session for over a month, and we already have 205 students from central american countries. in looking at the data that was available to us during the summer months and this has been updated. right now we have a total of 185 students in the san francisco area. at the time when we had this data we had 173. what is important for us that we needed to find out the school age and the different school levels that wered included in the number of

unaccompanied children or recorded and as you can tell here that a overwhelming majority are at the high school level. we also have data by zip code and you could see by neighborhood there is a percentage from mission burnel area but a significant from ingleside and bay view and visitacion valley and the southeast sector of the city. knowing this and these are the new comer pathways. we have 12 of them across the different levels. at the elementary level we have stand alone sites at chinese mission center and mission education center and middle school we have pathways within the comprehension schools in these areas and we have a new comer strand there so students are able to receive support but take other classes as well and similar to high school we have

new comer pathways at lincoln, marshal and sf international and also washington high school. >> excuse me ms. wong because i don't remember where is the location for chinese education and mission education center. >> chinese education is across from ports smith across and mission is in the heart of noe valley. and knowing that most of the school age children were at the high school level and they were mostly residing in the southeast sector we began to increase capacities at the high school level so even before school started we increased capacity at marshal school in the southeast sector so that the students that were unaccompanieded have access to a new comer pathway as well as we looked at the other high schools and making plans to increase

those capacities as well. this represents the system of support that we have for new comers at the high school level so as a new comer after they're assigned at the educational placement center they meet with a school counselor at their school and receive academic orientation, placement and any type of resources and referrals. the school counselor then works closely with the new comer pathway teacher to identify any type of transitional academic support and of course get the intensive english language development that is core to the pathway so the teachers get to know the students and better understand what their needs and services they would benefit. they are referred to the high school wellness program where they will get the physical, mental, health services and referrals to other social services. one thing that is